Abandoned Cars in Prairie Field

On my latest cross-Canada trip in my van, I found myself pulling off a quiet rural road just north of the U.S. border in Manitoba. The land there rolls out wide and unhurried, the kind of prairie that makes you feel both small and deeply connected. It was during this stretch of exploration, wandering through abandoned farms, that I came across these cars—left behind, half-buried in tall grass, silent but not forgotten.

There’s something haunting about stumbling across places like this. These farms once thrived, families once worked the fields, kids once played nearby, and engines like these once roared with purpose. Now the buildings sag, the machines sit idle, and time has taken the driver’s seat. Standing among these vehicles, I could almost feel the weight of that life once lived. The air carried a stillness, only broken by the sound of wind bending the grass around the skeletal frames of automobiles.

I chose to capture this scene in black and white because colour felt unnecessary—distracting even. Stripped of it, the focus shifts to texture and form: the rusted curves of hoods, the jagged edges where time has gnawed away at steel, the tangle of prairie grass crawling over and through what once was. The contrast between the softness of nature and the hardness of machines speaks volumes about resilience, decay, and the inevitable return of everything to the earth. 

As someone who has spent years exploring forgotten places, I never get tired of moments like these. They remind me that photography isn’t just about what’s in front of the camera—it’s about memory, imagination, and the echoes of stories that linger long after people have moved on. These abandoned cars are relics, yes, but they’re also storytellers. They hold within their frames countless untold journeys, every dent and scrape a chapter, every broken window a reminder of time’s grip.

This print isn’t polished nostalgia—it’s honest, gritty, and real. It speaks to those who find beauty in imperfection and meaning in the overlooked. That’s always been at the core of my work: real photography, captured in the field, not manufactured by software. What you see here is what I stood before, camera in hand, listening to the whispers of the prairie.

© Dan Kosmayer, 2025